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Tom Kludt

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Tom Kludt is a reporter for Talking Points Memo based in New York City, covering media and national affairs. Originally from South Dakota, Tom joined TPM as an intern in late-2011 and became a staff member during the 2012 election. He can be reached at tom@talkingpointsmemo.com.

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Egypt's newly elected president on Friday will address the throngs of demonstrators who have camped out at Tahrir Square in Cairo. In his speech, Mohamed Morsi will hail his victory as the country's "rebirth." Thoursands of people have gathered at Tahrir Square to protest the military's tight grip on power.

Very few Americans rank health care as the most important problem facing the country, a new poll from Gallup shows.

A day removed from the Supreme Court's landmark ruling on the Affordable Care Act — the culmination of an extended period when health care consumed much of the country's news coverage — only 6 percent of Americans cite health care as the country's top problem.

That's a sharp dip since 2009, when Democrats were pushing their health care overhaul through Congress and 26 percent of Americans said it was the nation's top probelm. The results of the poll may also parallel the lack of political will to revisit the debate over the 2010 law, widely known as "Obamacare."

One soldier was killed and two others wounded in a shooting Thursday at Fort Bragg, the North Carolina-based U.S. Army installation. Officials say a soldier shot and killed another member of his unit and then shot and wounded himself. A third soldier was also wounded in the shooting. The shooter has been taken into custody.

The mayor of Colorado Springs, Colo. said Thursday that the wildfire that has ravaged his city for the last six days ranks as the most destructive in the state's history. President Barack Obama is scheduled to survey the damage and meet with area firefighters in Colorado Springs on Friday.

Americans have grown more confident in their country's medical system since the 2010 passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, according to a new poll from Gallup released Thursday.

With the Supreme Court set to rule on the health care overhaul passed by Congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Barack Obama, 41 percent of Americans say they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the U.S. medical system — slightly up from the 39 percent who expressed confidence in 2009 and an even larger jump from 2007, when 36 percent said they were confident in the medical system.

According to Gallup, Republicans have consistently demonstrated greater confidence in the U.S. medical system than their Democratic counterparts. The latest poll shows that 49 percent of Republicans have confidence in the medical system, compared with 44 percent of Democrats. But Democrats' confidence has steadily risen, increasing by 17 percentage points over the last five years.

President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney are locked in tight races in three swing states, according to a trio of new NBC/Marist polls released Thursday.

According to the polls, Obama holds small leads in Michigan and North Carolina, but the president and Romney are deadlocked in New Hampshire. Obama's largest lead is in Michigan, where he tops the former Massachusetts governor, 47 percent to 43 percent. Still, that amounts to a much tighter race than many anticipated in a state pegged as favorable political terrain for Obama due to his administration's successful bailout of the U.S. automotive industry. The NBC/Marist survey is the latest of several recent public polls released over the last month that shows an increasingly close race in Michigan.

In North Carolina, where Demcrats will host their national convention at the end of the summer, Obama edges Romney, 46 percent to 44 percent. Meanwhile, the two candidates are tied at 45 percent in New Hampshire, where Democrats have won in four out of the previous five presidential elections.

Earning high marks from voters for his new immigration policy, President Barack Obama leads Mitt Romney in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida in a new poll from Quinnipiac University released Wednesday.

The president's largest lead is in Ohio, where he tops Romney, 47 percent to 38 percent. Obama is strengthened in the Buckeye State by advantages over Romney among both women and independent voters. Women widely prefer Obama over the presumptive Republican nominee, 50 percent to 35 percent, and the president holds a solid lead with independents, 45 percent to 36 percent. Ohio voters also say that Obama would do a better job than Romney on the economy by a 5-point margin, 47 percent to 42 percent.

The vast majority of Massachusetts voters do not consider the state's former governor, Mitt Romney, to be one of their own, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

According to the latest findings from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP), 65 percent of Romney's erstwhile constituents do not consider the presumptive Republican nominee "to be a Bay Stater."

On the eve of the Supreme Court's anticipated ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Americans are unhappy with both the status quo and the measure passed by Congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, according to a new poll released Wednesday.

In a continuation of an ongoing trend, the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that only 36 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the health care overhaul — widely known as "Obamacare." But a comprably low percentage, 39 percent, hold a favorable view of the health care system overhaul.

Seventy-five percent of respondents have a favorable view of their own coverage, perhaps an indication that many harbor reservations toward ACA out of fear that they will lose the quality care they already receive.